Lockdown Project - Days 29-38
05th May 2020
From the 5th of May onwards we (in Ireland) are allowed to travel up to 5km from home for exercise, having been restricted to 2km for the past 38 days. In the Catholic Ireland of old I bet they would have stretched it out to forty days just to incorporate a bit of a lesson from Jesus into the whole thing (wasn't he in a desert for forty days?). But thankfully the government has been taking advice from scientifically-minded health professionals during this crisis. It's a shame they won't pay as much heed to the scientists sounding the alarm about climate change and the destruction of the natural world (both of which will cause more disturbance to humans in the long run, albeit in a less immediate way perhaps). But credit where it's due, as it seems that so far we've done relatively well at limiting COVID-19 related deaths here (though I'm sure this "it could be worse" attitude is cold comfort for those who've lost loved ones).
I'm still in two minds about carrying on this little project now that the 2km limit is up, partly as the general sense of doom has been with me more in the past ten days than it was in the previous four weeks (and it's hard to be excited for such things when existential doubts abound), and partly because a 5km circle around my home sounds almost overwhelming at the minute. Over 78 square kilometres of land and sea to explore. Actually, it's even more if you take topographical undulations into account. Imagine that!
Here are the last few images from the 2km lockdown I experienced in West Kerry in these strange times. A friend told me recently how this will be a great thing to look back on to remember the whole thing in years to come, which I hadn't actually thought about. Maybe the whole situation is teaching me to be more in the present.
Be safe, stay well, wash your hands. Heed the advice please, it's not oppression from a corrupt dictatorship, it's compassion-based help to make sure as few of us die from this disease as possible (I'm speaking for Ireland here, hope it's the same where you are). Effective treatment will come along some day, as well as an acceptance and normalisation of the changes we'll need to make to live safely in this new world. In the meantime, try find some wonder in the smaller worlds we all inhabit now. People rarely strayed beyond their townlands not so long ago, and they didn't have the internet to entertain them. You can do it!
April 25th
A ridiculously blue forget-me-not in the garden. Easily overlooked as they're generally very small, but these tiny flowers are well worth seeking out. See the blades of grass alongside for a bit of scale.
April 26th
Part of the inscription on the Ogham stone at Teampall Manacháin (it has been interpreted as reading "of Qeniloci, the son of the son of Ainia, the son of…") This old site consists of the remains of an early Christian oratory, some nicely marked old graves, a holy well and a souterrain, all situated next to this stone, which I believe would have pre-dated Christianity (look for the faint outline of a cross near the top of the image here, a bit of a mixing of ages). It's located just the other side of the hill behind my house, yet it took til now for me to visit it. The setting is very nice, with the Skelligs visible, 44km away on the horizon through a shallow notch in the hills; hardly an accident given the monastic site out there would have been in full swing at the same time as this one. I've been thinking a lot recently about why these old sites are so interesting to me, given it's nothing to do with religious devotion. I think it's just the idea of the stones being more or less the same now as they were back then, despite the landscapes around them having undergone such huge changes in that same length of time. And that's before even getting to imagine how old the stones are...
April 27th
Cotton grass at sunset from the hill behind home. In the past these fluffy white flowers were used for bedding, but I don't think the plants have much fear of being picked in Ireland these days. Will there ever be a day when high thread count West of Ireland cotton will be in greater demand than imports from Egypt? If the predictability of 2020 is anything to go by then who knows what could happen?
April 28th
Emperor dragonfly in a hedge near home. This was a particularly rich walk for wildlife; as well as a few specimens of these relatively huge little beasts there were countless damselflies and butterflies flying and flitting about the flower-filled hedges. I saw a kestrel squabbling with a pair of grey crows, before they left it to scribe lazy rising circles on the warm thermals above the hill. It came to my mind that the shape of those spirals was the same shape as the proteins making up the bird's DNA, those magic molecules that gave rise to that rising bird I'd been looking at. The same invisible helix structure on two very different scales, all underlying the potential and reality of this one bird. And then I started thinking about all the wonderful names that have been ascribed to the kestrel, pocaire gaoithe and windfucker being the best... Not twenty minutes later a stoat landed in the lane within three feet of me as I sat on a rock for a rest. It was gone again before my brain could fully register it, a bit like light from a distant star giving an impression from the past rather than real time. But it was certainly a treat.
April 29th
Snow on the 29th of April. This was all the more unusual given how warm it had been the previous day, with real July heat in the sun. But after an afternoon of light rain I went out to watch a nice sunset develop and got a bit of a shock to see the showers had fallen as snow on Mount Brandon. It's certainly the latest I've seen fresh snow in Ireland.
April 30th
An abandoned farmhouse at Ullagha. I've been admiring this place since I moved to the area, having to pass it on my way into and out of town. The track leading up to it and the border of trees are idyllic to me. It's probably a bit of a kip at this stage, and I reckon it's a very windy spot, but there's no harm in letting notions of fixing it up run wild in my mind.
May 1st
The beginning of May is a big date in the old Irish calendar, marking the start of Bealtaine (the summer season). May is probably my favourite month, and the first weekend of May is (or was, and will be in the future) a big one in Dingle, marked by the celebrations of Féile na Bealtaine. The highlight of this little festival for me is definitely the pagan rave, a trans-timescale experience that pretty much does what the name suggests. I missed it this year. Heading up the hill behind home to watch the sun come up will have to do for 2020. A good consolation for missing the rave was seeing a fox dart away across my path through the rushes in the half-dark before dawn. Seeing or speaking about anything with red hair (human women included) was considered bad luck for fishermen in Ireland not that long ago. I've no doubt there are still some auld lads alive who'd turn around and go home rather than get into a boat after seeing a fox on their way to the quay. In this age of depopulation of wild things I consider any animal sighting as good luck. It seems the real ill omen has generally been working the other way around; for an animal catching sight of one of us.
May 2nd
Sunset reflected in the living room window. The sunsets have been pretty good these last few weeks, or maybe I'm just taking more time to notice them. Good thing I painted the house before making this photo, lest I be judged as a peasant living in decrepitude. Shame the paint won't stop the leaks...
May 3rd
A little wood adjacent to a ruinous house in Imileá. Though the bluebells are the imported Spanish variety and the wild garlic is three-cornered leek instead of ramsons (I'm not fussy, I swear) this is a lovely little spot I sometimes stop in at when out on the bike. Trees are rare around here, so much so that a collection of them marking the borders of an old homestead begins to feel like a woodland.
May 4th
The townland of Leataoibh Mór, looking very cluttered from this angle. It's not as busy as it looks, in terms of layout or population. Of twelve properties I can count here only five are lived in year round. A common state of affairs in plenty of Ireland's scenic areas.
I'm still in two minds about carrying on this little project now that the 2km limit is up, partly as the general sense of doom has been with me more in the past ten days than it was in the previous four weeks (and it's hard to be excited for such things when existential doubts abound), and partly because a 5km circle around my home sounds almost overwhelming at the minute. Over 78 square kilometres of land and sea to explore. Actually, it's even more if you take topographical undulations into account. Imagine that!
Here are the last few images from the 2km lockdown I experienced in West Kerry in these strange times. A friend told me recently how this will be a great thing to look back on to remember the whole thing in years to come, which I hadn't actually thought about. Maybe the whole situation is teaching me to be more in the present.
Be safe, stay well, wash your hands. Heed the advice please, it's not oppression from a corrupt dictatorship, it's compassion-based help to make sure as few of us die from this disease as possible (I'm speaking for Ireland here, hope it's the same where you are). Effective treatment will come along some day, as well as an acceptance and normalisation of the changes we'll need to make to live safely in this new world. In the meantime, try find some wonder in the smaller worlds we all inhabit now. People rarely strayed beyond their townlands not so long ago, and they didn't have the internet to entertain them. You can do it!
April 25th
A ridiculously blue forget-me-not in the garden. Easily overlooked as they're generally very small, but these tiny flowers are well worth seeking out. See the blades of grass alongside for a bit of scale.
April 26th
Part of the inscription on the Ogham stone at Teampall Manacháin (it has been interpreted as reading "of Qeniloci, the son of the son of Ainia, the son of…") This old site consists of the remains of an early Christian oratory, some nicely marked old graves, a holy well and a souterrain, all situated next to this stone, which I believe would have pre-dated Christianity (look for the faint outline of a cross near the top of the image here, a bit of a mixing of ages). It's located just the other side of the hill behind my house, yet it took til now for me to visit it. The setting is very nice, with the Skelligs visible, 44km away on the horizon through a shallow notch in the hills; hardly an accident given the monastic site out there would have been in full swing at the same time as this one. I've been thinking a lot recently about why these old sites are so interesting to me, given it's nothing to do with religious devotion. I think it's just the idea of the stones being more or less the same now as they were back then, despite the landscapes around them having undergone such huge changes in that same length of time. And that's before even getting to imagine how old the stones are...
April 27th
Cotton grass at sunset from the hill behind home. In the past these fluffy white flowers were used for bedding, but I don't think the plants have much fear of being picked in Ireland these days. Will there ever be a day when high thread count West of Ireland cotton will be in greater demand than imports from Egypt? If the predictability of 2020 is anything to go by then who knows what could happen?
April 28th
Emperor dragonfly in a hedge near home. This was a particularly rich walk for wildlife; as well as a few specimens of these relatively huge little beasts there were countless damselflies and butterflies flying and flitting about the flower-filled hedges. I saw a kestrel squabbling with a pair of grey crows, before they left it to scribe lazy rising circles on the warm thermals above the hill. It came to my mind that the shape of those spirals was the same shape as the proteins making up the bird's DNA, those magic molecules that gave rise to that rising bird I'd been looking at. The same invisible helix structure on two very different scales, all underlying the potential and reality of this one bird. And then I started thinking about all the wonderful names that have been ascribed to the kestrel, pocaire gaoithe and windfucker being the best... Not twenty minutes later a stoat landed in the lane within three feet of me as I sat on a rock for a rest. It was gone again before my brain could fully register it, a bit like light from a distant star giving an impression from the past rather than real time. But it was certainly a treat.
April 29th
Snow on the 29th of April. This was all the more unusual given how warm it had been the previous day, with real July heat in the sun. But after an afternoon of light rain I went out to watch a nice sunset develop and got a bit of a shock to see the showers had fallen as snow on Mount Brandon. It's certainly the latest I've seen fresh snow in Ireland.
April 30th
An abandoned farmhouse at Ullagha. I've been admiring this place since I moved to the area, having to pass it on my way into and out of town. The track leading up to it and the border of trees are idyllic to me. It's probably a bit of a kip at this stage, and I reckon it's a very windy spot, but there's no harm in letting notions of fixing it up run wild in my mind.
May 1st
The beginning of May is a big date in the old Irish calendar, marking the start of Bealtaine (the summer season). May is probably my favourite month, and the first weekend of May is (or was, and will be in the future) a big one in Dingle, marked by the celebrations of Féile na Bealtaine. The highlight of this little festival for me is definitely the pagan rave, a trans-timescale experience that pretty much does what the name suggests. I missed it this year. Heading up the hill behind home to watch the sun come up will have to do for 2020. A good consolation for missing the rave was seeing a fox dart away across my path through the rushes in the half-dark before dawn. Seeing or speaking about anything with red hair (human women included) was considered bad luck for fishermen in Ireland not that long ago. I've no doubt there are still some auld lads alive who'd turn around and go home rather than get into a boat after seeing a fox on their way to the quay. In this age of depopulation of wild things I consider any animal sighting as good luck. It seems the real ill omen has generally been working the other way around; for an animal catching sight of one of us.
May 2nd
Sunset reflected in the living room window. The sunsets have been pretty good these last few weeks, or maybe I'm just taking more time to notice them. Good thing I painted the house before making this photo, lest I be judged as a peasant living in decrepitude. Shame the paint won't stop the leaks...
May 3rd
A little wood adjacent to a ruinous house in Imileá. Though the bluebells are the imported Spanish variety and the wild garlic is three-cornered leek instead of ramsons (I'm not fussy, I swear) this is a lovely little spot I sometimes stop in at when out on the bike. Trees are rare around here, so much so that a collection of them marking the borders of an old homestead begins to feel like a woodland.
May 4th
The townland of Leataoibh Mór, looking very cluttered from this angle. It's not as busy as it looks, in terms of layout or population. Of twelve properties I can count here only five are lived in year round. A common state of affairs in plenty of Ireland's scenic areas.
Comments
By Colleen: I have many wonderfull memories of Ullagha. Thanks for the recent pictures
My mother was born in Ullagha
Thanks